The chief executive of the CSIRO, Dr Larry Marshall, wants to calm concerns about the survival of particular research programs.
Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The chief executive of the CSIRO, Larry Marshall, has defended the agency’s cuts to climate change research and criticised the media for inaccurate reporting.

In a release posted to the CSIRO website titled “Correcting the public record on changes at CSIRO”, Marshall took issue with reports about the proportion of staff in the oceans and atmosphere unit that would be cut and sought to calm concerns about the survival of particular research programs.

“In our oceans and atmosphere business we have about 420 staff, not 140 as reported by some media, and after these changes we expect to have about 355, contrary to media reports,” Marshall said.

A senior researcher in the oceans and atmosphere business told Guardian Australia it was true there were 420 staff across the whole unit but, in the two divisions that studied climate change, there were only about 140 full-time equivalent staff.

He said the oceans and atmosphere unit had two programs that researched climate change: “Assessing our climate” and “Oceans and climate”.

“[Marshall] clearly said climate would be cut so it must be from those programs,” the researcher said.

Marshall also emphasised there would be no net loss of staff at the CSIRO over a two-year period.

The CSIRO Staff Association has lodged a formal dispute with management over the job losses, claiming CSIRO management has breached their enterprise agreement by failing to consult with staff over changes that could impact on their jobs. In a letter to management, the association asks for the changes to be suspended and for more details to be shared with the staff.

A spokesman for the association said a meeting of members next week would consider industrial action. Since a new enterprise agreement is currently being negotiated, industrial action would be protected under the Fair Work Act.

“Without pre-empting any decision our council might make, I feel as though we will probably go on a more aggressive footing when dealing with management now,” he said.

Marshall’s statement indicated the climate models that CSIRO runs would be moved to another institution.

“Our climate models have long been and will continue to be available to any researcher and we will work with our stakeholders to develop a transition plan to achieve this,” he said.

But Andy Pitman, the director of the ARC centre of excellence for climate system science at the University of NSW, said there was no way a university could take on that responsibility.

“I mean I run a centre of excellence which is the the best-funded university capability in the country and we do not remotely have the capability to be the custodians for the climate modelling systems,” Pitman said. “We live and breathe on a three-year funding cycle with an 80% failure rate. You cannot run a national capability in that environment.”

Marshall also reassured the public about the future of the Cape Grim atmospheric modelling station, saying “it is not under threat from the changes”.

Guardian Australia has sought further clarification from Marshall.

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A draft letter to the government from international climate scientists has gathered more than 2,100 signatures and a section of the World Meteorological Organisation has issued a statement condemning the cuts.

Paul Durack, of the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory in the US, has been collecting signatures from international climate scientists for an open letter to the Australian government calling for the CSIRO capabilities threatened by the cuts to be saved.

On Monday night the World Climate Research Program put out a strongly worded statement against the cuts.

“We read that these cuts occur in the name of innovation,” it said. “One can hardly imagine a worse and more backward step toward any of those laudable goals than ignoring climate and discarding climate research.”